Teaching Beyond the Narrative. The purpose of this post is to encourage teachers of history to rethink (if they already have not) their methodology of teaching history, and to have them consider history as a narrative. The reason? Students have lost interest in history and social studies. For example, in the United States less than 25% of students perform above the proficient level in U.S. History.[1] We must ask ourselves, why do some students overwhelmingly seem to dislike learning about history? Well, according to sociologist James Loewen, high school students hate history because it’s boring.[2] In a 2010 survey, social scientists WB Russell & Stewart Waters determined that students consider history dull because lectures requiring rote memorization and a passive learning environment keeps them from becoming actively engaged with the topic.[3] The take away by historians should be that teaching history ought not to be about dates or tedious repetition of facts but instead should tell a story about the political, economic, religious or social ramifications of events in history. Furthermore, this passive learning environment fails to expose the students to the wonders of research. Tutors should not just teach history, but should also instruct on how to be a historian. They must, in effect, commit to teaching beyond the narrative.
Teaching history as a narrative, that is, through a chronological, cause and effect methodology with an idea of placing the student’s imagination inside the story is the most effective way to teach history. When a narrative can be constructed, the context of historical characters’ actions, or the broader context of historical developments, can help the reader to keep events in chronological order, while understanding the broader context of the story. This encourages the student to think beyond just the single narrative and to delve deeper into what may motivate not only the characters, but the author of the narrative itself.
Hayden White is one of the foremost American scholars and thinkers advocating for a narrative approach to history education. In his book Metahistory, White argues that it is typical for historical works to be constructed in a narrative form — a “coherent and ordered representation of events or developments in sequential time.”[4] Historians, by the nature of their field and their subject matter, are limited or constrained by the limits of the evidence available to them, and the nature of that evidence. It is important that educators utilizing the narrative format remember that the purpose of teaching history as a narrative is not to support a particular version of history, but to ultimately teach how narratives are created in the first place. Students must learn to understand that there are multiple narratives possible depending on the point of view of the particular scholar. This is how students begin to learn to think like a historian.
The use of history as narrative in the educational field has not been universally accepted as a valid or appropriate method. Both historians and history educators, continue to argue whether history should contain – or be based on – a narrative structure that presents material chronologically. A postmodernist historian would hold that history, and historiography, cannot be simply quantified and determined as one particular narrative with one particular meaning.[5] The problem with this is that non-narrative history typically represents the larger group – the cohort or mass actor. By contrast, a narrative approach to history-telling is more likely to focus on the individual, a character or narrator who reveals their personal experiences and perhaps their emotional responses to historical events and dilemmas. Students of history can commonly relate more easily to the individual, with whom they may be able to identify common experiences or emotions.
By implication and extension, it appears that history as narrative is a most effective educational tool when students are enabled to switch between engaging with the narrative itself and building critical understanding of how it is constructed as a piece of historical material. The narrative itself is often accessible and engaging for the individual student or student group; however, the educator should make sure that students are equipped with the critical thinking skills to interrogate and assess the narrative and its function. At the high school level, students should be equipped and enabled to “think like historians” in their interactions with historical narratives. This entails interrogating the evidence presented in the narrative, assessing any narrator bias, omission or fictional filling-in of the narrative.
By encouraging students to think beyond the narrative approach to history, they learn to understand that a single story may not be representative of broad historical experience in the era or situation depicted. Providing students with multiple narratives from different perspectives, and different opinions or moral approaches to the same historical event will help contextualize the information. This gives students the opportunity to see various angles or sides of a historical event or development, and to form their own opinions about causation and the interpretation of historical documents and evidence. The presentation of antagonist views through multiple narratives allows students to understand the role of opinion and best guesses in connecting historical data and evidence into a fully-formed narrative. When students engage with mass-media and entertainment-oriented historical narratives in the world outside the classroom, the critical skills refined in the classroom can be used as the basis for informed opinions about the likely bias and accuracy of historical entertainment, historical fiction and popular-media history programs that permeate every-day life.
As long as students are made aware that a historical narrative is not necessarily an entirely objective piece of material, they can easily engage with the material presented in narrative form. An understanding of history is best developed through knowledge of causal relationships and historical development over or across generations. History as narrative allows for such an overarching view and understanding. Therefore, a narrative approach to history education allows educators to harness students’ natural and established interest in narrative structure. History as narrative is the proper, and most effective, method of teaching history in the twenty-first century classroom.
Bibliography
Ankersmit, F. R. "Historiography and Postmodernism." History and Theory 28 (1989): 137-53.
Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. Touchstone trade pbk. ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007.
Russell, WB, and Stewart Waters. "Instructional Methods for Teaching Social Studies: A Survey of What Middle School Students Like and Dislike About Social Studies Instruction." Journal for the Liberal Arts and Sciences 14, no. 2 (2010): 7-14.
White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe Baltimore: . Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.
"The Nation's Report Card ". In The National Assessment of Educational Progress, edited by National Center for Education Statistics Institute of Education Sciences, 2010.
[1] "The Nation's Report Card ", in The National Assessment of Educational Progress, ed. National Center for Education Statistics Institute of Education Sciences(2010). [2] James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, Touchstone trade pbk. ed.(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 1. [3] WB Russell and Stewart Waters, "Instructional Methods for Teaching Social Studies: A Survey of What Middle School Students Like and Dislike About Social Studies Instruction," Journal for the Liberal Arts and Sciences 14, no. 2 (2010). [4] Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe Baltimore: (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). [5] F. R. Ankersmit, "Historiography and Postmodernism," History and Theory 28(1989): 137-53.
The Use of Social Learning Theory in Teaching Practice
This Wiki post is inspired by a book written by Albert Bandura (1977) related to social learning theory and by my own research thesis exploring the relationship between the social context and individuals’ learning.
According to social learning theory, individuals’ learning is not merely limited to their own personal experiences, but is also influenced by their social context (McGregor, 2009). The social context means the context in which learning takes place (ibid.). Bandura is often credited for developing and establishing social learning theory (Van et al., 2009). He argues that learning does not solely occur through trial and error, but also through observing, imitating and modeling others’ behaviour (Bandura, 1977). He also emphasises the role of cognition in this process because people think about what they observe in different ways (ibid.).
Social Learning Theory suggests that the environment influences people’s behaviour (McGregor, 2009). However, people are not passive in this process, as they can influence their environment with their behaviour (ibid.). In other words, both humans and their environment reciprocally impact one another (Bandura, 1977).
Self-efficacy is another important concept in social learning theory. Self-efficacy refers to peoples’ beliefs in their capability to attain certain outcomes (Bandura, 1977). The self-efficacy beliefs people hold have an important role in influencing whether they think in self-enhancing or self-inhibiting ways, which can in turn affect their motivation and performance levels (Bandura and Locke, 2003).
In the context of teaching, social learning theory provides great insights into how students learn and assimilate new information. For example, in classrooms, teachers can ensure that students are provided with a positive working environment that is conducive to learning. As students are not only passive recipients of information, but also play a part in creating the classroom environment, teachers can enhance the learning process by taking steps to actively engage students, and provide a range of teaching styles according to students’ needs. Furthermore, teachers can consider displaying positive behaviour, because students might observe, learn and imitate the behaviour. Teachers can also increase students’ self-efficacy by providing them with constructive feedback, praising them for good work, and supporting them in the face of failure.
Social learning theory is a very useful and informative theory that explains people’s behaviour and learning processes. It is therefore essential that teachers are aware of the role that social learning plays in influencing students’ experiences and learning processes in classrooms.
Bibliography
Bandura, A. (1977). Social Learning Theory. United States of America: Prentice Hall .
Bandura, A., & Locke, E. (2003). Negative Self-Efficacy and Goal Effects Revisited. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88 (1), 87-99.
McGregor, S. (2009). Reorienting Consumer Education Using Social Learning Theory: Sustainable Development Via Authentic Consumer Pedagogy. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 33 (3), 258-266.
Van, B., Röling, N., Aarts, N., & Turnhout, E. (2009). Social Learning for Solving Complex Probelms: a Promising Solution or Wishful Thinking? a Case Study of Multi-Actor Negotiation fot the Integrated Management and Sustainable Use of the Drentsche Aa Area in the Netherlands . Environmental Policy and Governance , 19 (6), 400-412.
Teaching Beyond the Narrative.
The purpose of this post is to encourage teachers of history to rethink (if they already have not) their methodology of teaching history, and to have them consider history as a narrative. The reason? Students have lost interest in history and social studies. For example, in the United States less than 25% of students perform above the proficient level in U.S. History.[1] We must ask ourselves, why do some students overwhelmingly seem to dislike learning about history? Well, according to sociologist James Loewen, high school students hate history because it’s boring.[2] In a 2010 survey, social scientists WB Russell & Stewart Waters determined that students consider history dull because lectures requiring rote memorization and a passive learning environment keeps them from becoming actively engaged with the topic.[3] The take away by historians should be that teaching history ought not to be about dates or tedious repetition of facts but instead should tell a story about the political, economic, religious or social ramifications of events in history. Furthermore, this passive learning environment fails to expose the students to the wonders of research. Tutors should not just teach history, but should also instruct on how to be a historian. They must, in effect, commit to teaching beyond the narrative.
Teaching history as a narrative, that is, through a chronological, cause and effect methodology with an idea of placing the student’s imagination inside the story is the most effective way to teach history. When a narrative can be constructed, the context of historical characters’ actions, or the broader context of historical developments, can help the reader to keep events in chronological order, while understanding the broader context of the story. This encourages the student to think beyond just the single narrative and to delve deeper into what may motivate not only the characters, but the author of the narrative itself.
Hayden White is one of the foremost American scholars and thinkers advocating for a narrative approach to history education. In his book Metahistory, White argues that it is typical for historical works to be constructed in a narrative form — a “coherent and ordered representation of events or developments in sequential time.”[4] Historians, by the nature of their field and their subject matter, are limited or constrained by the limits of the evidence available to them, and the nature of that evidence. It is important that educators utilizing the narrative format remember that the purpose of teaching history as a narrative is not to support a particular version of history, but to ultimately teach how narratives are created in the first place. Students must learn to understand that there are multiple narratives possible depending on the point of view of the particular scholar. This is how students begin to learn to think like a historian.
The use of history as narrative in the educational field has not been universally accepted as a valid or appropriate method. Both historians and history educators, continue to argue whether history should contain – or be based on – a narrative structure that presents material chronologically. A postmodernist historian would hold that history, and historiography, cannot be simply quantified and determined as one particular narrative with one particular meaning.[5] The problem with this is that non-narrative history typically represents the larger group – the cohort or mass actor. By contrast, a narrative approach to history-telling is more likely to focus on the individual, a character or narrator who reveals their personal experiences and perhaps their emotional responses to historical events and dilemmas. Students of history can commonly relate more easily to the individual, with whom they may be able to identify common experiences or emotions.
By implication and extension, it appears that history as narrative is a most effective educational tool when students are enabled to switch between engaging with the narrative itself and building critical understanding of how it is constructed as a piece of historical material. The narrative itself is often accessible and engaging for the individual student or student group; however, the educator should make sure that students are equipped with the critical thinking skills to interrogate and assess the narrative and its function. At the high school level, students should be equipped and enabled to “think like historians” in their interactions with historical narratives. This entails interrogating the evidence presented in the narrative, assessing any narrator bias, omission or fictional filling-in of the narrative.
By encouraging students to think beyond the narrative approach to history, they learn to understand that a single story may not be representative of broad historical experience in the era or situation depicted. Providing students with multiple narratives from different perspectives, and different opinions or moral approaches to the same historical event will help contextualize the information. This gives students the opportunity to see various angles or sides of a historical event or development, and to form their own opinions about causation and the interpretation of historical documents and evidence. The presentation of antagonist views through multiple narratives allows students to understand the role of opinion and best guesses in connecting historical data and evidence into a fully-formed narrative. When students engage with mass-media and entertainment-oriented historical narratives in the world outside the classroom, the critical skills refined in the classroom can be used as the basis for informed opinions about the likely bias and accuracy of historical entertainment, historical fiction and popular-media history programs that permeate every-day life.
As long as students are made aware that a historical narrative is not necessarily an entirely objective piece of material, they can easily engage with the material presented in narrative form. An understanding of history is best developed through knowledge of causal relationships and historical development over or across generations. History as narrative allows for such an overarching view and understanding. Therefore, a narrative approach to history education allows educators to harness students’ natural and established interest in narrative structure. History as narrative is the proper, and most effective, method of teaching history in the twenty-first century classroom.
Bibliography
Ankersmit, F. R. "Historiography and Postmodernism." History and Theory 28 (1989): 137-53.
Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. Touchstone trade pbk. ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007.
Russell, WB, and Stewart Waters. "Instructional Methods for Teaching Social Studies: A Survey of What Middle School Students Like and Dislike About Social Studies Instruction." Journal for the Liberal Arts and Sciences 14, no. 2 (2010): 7-14.
White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe Baltimore: . Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.
"The Nation's Report Card ". In The National Assessment of Educational Progress, edited by National Center for Education Statistics Institute of Education Sciences, 2010.
[1] "The Nation's Report Card ", in The National Assessment of Educational Progress, ed. National Center for Education Statistics Institute of Education Sciences(2010).
[2] James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, Touchstone trade pbk. ed.(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 1.
[3] WB Russell and Stewart Waters, "Instructional Methods for Teaching Social Studies: A Survey of What Middle School Students Like and Dislike About Social Studies Instruction," Journal for the Liberal Arts and Sciences 14, no. 2 (2010).
[4] Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe Baltimore: (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973).
[5] F. R. Ankersmit, "Historiography and Postmodernism," History and Theory 28(1989): 137-53.
The Use of Social Learning Theory in Teaching Practice
This Wiki post is inspired by a book written by Albert Bandura (1977) related to social learning theory and by my own research thesis exploring the relationship between the social context and individuals’ learning.
According to social learning theory, individuals’ learning is not merely limited to their own personal experiences, but is also influenced by their social context (McGregor, 2009). The social context means the context in which learning takes place (ibid.). Bandura is often credited for developing and establishing social learning theory (Van et al., 2009). He argues that learning does not solely occur through trial and error, but also through observing, imitating and modeling others’ behaviour (Bandura, 1977). He also emphasises the role of cognition in this process because people think about what they observe in different ways (ibid.).
Social Learning Theory suggests that the environment influences people’s behaviour (McGregor, 2009). However, people are not passive in this process, as they can influence their environment with their behaviour (ibid.). In other words, both humans and their environment reciprocally impact one another (Bandura, 1977).
Self-efficacy is another important concept in social learning theory. Self-efficacy refers to peoples’ beliefs in their capability to attain certain outcomes (Bandura, 1977). The self-efficacy beliefs people hold have an important role in influencing whether they think in self-enhancing or self-inhibiting ways, which can in turn affect their motivation and performance levels (Bandura and Locke, 2003).
In the context of teaching, social learning theory provides great insights into how students learn and assimilate new information. For example, in classrooms, teachers can ensure that students are provided with a positive working environment that is conducive to learning. As students are not only passive recipients of information, but also play a part in creating the classroom environment, teachers can enhance the learning process by taking steps to actively engage students, and provide a range of teaching styles according to students’ needs. Furthermore, teachers can consider displaying positive behaviour, because students might observe, learn and imitate the behaviour. Teachers can also increase students’ self-efficacy by providing them with constructive feedback, praising them for good work, and supporting them in the face of failure.
Social learning theory is a very useful and informative theory that explains people’s behaviour and learning processes. It is therefore essential that teachers are aware of the role that social learning plays in influencing students’ experiences and learning processes in classrooms.
Bibliography
Bandura, A. (1977). Social Learning Theory. United States of America: Prentice Hall .Bandura, A., & Locke, E. (2003). Negative Self-Efficacy and Goal Effects Revisited. Journal of Applied Psychology , 88 (1), 87-99.
McGregor, S. (2009). Reorienting Consumer Education Using Social Learning Theory: Sustainable Development Via Authentic Consumer Pedagogy. International Journal of Consumer Studies , 33 (3), 258-266.
Van, B., Röling, N., Aarts, N., & Turnhout, E. (2009). Social Learning for Solving Complex Probelms: a Promising Solution or Wishful Thinking? a Case Study of Multi-Actor Negotiation fot the Integrated Management and Sustainable Use of the Drentsche Aa Area in the Netherlands . Environmental Policy and Governance , 19 (6), 400-412.